The present invention relates to butt plates for a weapon adapted to be fired from the shoulder, such as a shotgun, in which a butt plate, formed of rubber, plastic or other suitable material, is mounted by means of threaded fasteners, such as screws, to the weapon stock which is formed of wood or other similar material and which in form and dimension is substantially identical to the form and dimension of the rearward face of the weapon stock.
The stocks of weapons which are adapted to be fired from the shoulder, such as shotguns, are generally manufactured of wood by turning and grinding the wood to relatively close dimensions. It has been conventional to fasten or mount a butt plate formed of plastic, rubber or other suitable material to the rearward face of the stock by means of threaded fasteners, such as screws. Conventional butt plates are mated to the external dimensions of the wooden stock during the finishing stages of manufacture by steplessly grinding the plastic or rubber butt plate to the same external dimensions and form as the rearward face of the wood stock.
However, the construction of conventional butt plates and the conventional manufacturing methods described above have several disadvantages. Generally, the replacement of a particular butt plate with another, such as where the existing butt plate has been broken or where it is desired to use a butt plate of a different type, has in the past been a relatively difficult procedure. This disadvantage is mainly the result of the fact that each butt plate must be individually shaped so that replacement of one butt plate with another requires the new part to be ground to the dimensions of the existing firearm stock in addition to renewal of the surface treatment of the stock. For these reasons, the replacement of a conventional butt plate on a do-it-yourself basis has not been generally successful.
Another disadvantage of conventional arrangements arises from the fact that conventional butt plates have been fastened to the stock of the firearm by means of screws threaded into the wood of the stock with the mounting holes receiving the screws being in the same direction as the wood grain. Thus, it has been observed that after removing butt plates which have been screwed to the wooden stock several times, the threads provided in the mounting bores tend to fracture or otherwise fail whereupon the mounting of the butt plate to the stock becomes quite unreliable.
Although it has been attempted to manufacture the firearm stock in an extremely accurate manner on wood lathes to such close dimensions that standard butt plates could be interchangeably mounted on the stock, this technique has not always provided satisfactory results. In particular, since the hardness of the wood from which the stock is formed tends to vary and since the wooden stock absorbs moisture which results in changes in dimension of the stock, deviations between the configuration and dimension of the stock and butt plate occur. It will be understood that even a relatively small stepped surface deviation between the butt plate and the rearward face of the wooden stock affects the overall appearance of the weapon in a deleterious manner.